Craig Ailey, South Ailey Road, 1850, Alexander Thomson

One of Thomson's earliest known designs, a summer residence built for John McElroy; eloquent Italian with a marked Germanic neoclassical accent, notably in the use of the campanile as a compositional device. From the striated stone podium whose randon masonry mimics the cliff edge on which it sits, to the flattened pyramidal cap of the belvedere, this picturesque villa stretches up to enjoy the scenic expance of the Firth of Clyde. In the semicicular drawing-room window, one of the first uses of patent rolled plate glass; in the shallow protuding eaves and (now missing) Greek ornament, tentative indictations of the style in which Thomson was to excel. The gateposts slender freestone with indents of quartz, share the corbels, shallow headgear and peeping eyes of the staircase tower.